Of course, I agree that a book must ultimately depend for its fate upon its own qualities. But when Mr. Hall Caine talks of "a growing sense," I ask, In whom does this sense first grow? And I answer, In the cultured few who enforce it upon the many--as in this very case of Wordsworth. And I hold the credit of the result (apart from the author's share) belongs rather to those few persistent advocates than to those judges who are only "ultimate" in the sense that they are the last to be convinced. [B] If the reader object that I am using the Great Heart and Great Brain of the Public as interchangeable terms, I would refer him to Mr. Du Maurier's famous Comic Alphabet, letter Z:-- "Z is a Zoophyte, whose heart's in his head, And whose head's in his turn--rudimentary Z!" [C] _Questions at Issue_; by Edmund Gosse. London: William Heinemann. A CASE OF BOOKSTALL CENSORSHIP March 16, 1895. The "Woman Who Did," and Mr. Eason who wouldn't. "In the romantic little town of 'Ighbury, My father kept a Succulating Libary...." --and, I regret to say, gave himself airs on the strength of it. The persons in my instructive little story are-- H.H. Prince Francis of Teck. Mr. Grant Allen, author of _The Woman Who Did_. Mr. W.T. Stead, Editor of _The Review of Reviews_. Messrs. Eason & Son, booksellers and newsvendors, possessing on the railways of Ireland a monopoly similar to that enjoyed by Messrs. W.H. Smith & Son on the railways of Great Britain. Mr. James O'Hara, of 18, Cope Street, Dublin. A Clerk. Now, on the appearance of Mr. Grant Allen's _The Woman Who Did_, Mr. Stead conceived the desire of criticising it as the "Book of the Month" in _The Review of Reviews_ for February, 1895. He strongly dissents from the doctrine of _The Woman Who Did_, and he also believes that the book indicts, and goes far to destroy, its own doctrine. This opinion, I may say, is shared by many critics. He says "Wedlock is to Mr. Grant Allen _Nehushtan_. And the odd thing about it is that the net effect of the book which he has written with his heart's blood to destroy this said _Nehushtan_ can hardly fail to strengthen the foundation of reasoned conviction upon which marriage rests." And again--"Those who do not know the author, but who take what I must regard as the saner view of the relations of the sexes, will rejoice at what might have been a potent force for evil has been so strangely overruled as to become a reinforcement of the garrison defending the citadel its author desires so ardently to overthrow. From the point of view of the fervent apostle of Free Love, this is a Boomerang of a Book."